INTRODUCTION
with two answers. There are forty letters to friends, two being in Greek, and one answer (from Appian); two in Greek to the mother of Marcus; the set piece on Arion; the two specimens of nugalia, the De Bello Parthico, the Principia Historiae, and the Greek λόγος ἐρωτικός.
There are few traces of Fronto's letters in such subsequent writers as have descended to us. It is certain that Minucius Felix, who was probably a fellow-countryman of Fronto's, knew something of him, for in his Octavius he quotes his declamation against the Christians, and calls him Cirtensis noster,[1] Capitolinus,[2] or his authority Marius Maximus, probably had an eye on what Fronto says, when he mentions the habit that Marcus had of reading in the theatre, and where he calls him durus. However that may be, it can hardly be doubted that Nazarius[3] in his Panegyric on Constantine recalls, though in a confused way, what Fronto says about the Parthian king and Verus in his Principia Historiae. Symmachus too, another orator of the same century, shews some signs of being acquainted with Fronto. Augustine, himself an African, is supposed in a letter to the Cirtenses to refer to the mention of Polemo by Fronto.[4]
- ↑ Mai, Pref. to ed. 1823, p. xxxiii., and Schanz, Rhein. Mus. 1895, p. 133, adduce certain supposed parallelisms. If there is anything in them, the Octavius could not have been written before 166 at least.
- ↑ Vit. Mar. xv. and xxii. 5; see below, p. 206.
- ↑ He speaks of Antoninus, but he means Lucius Verus.
- ↑ Epist. 144: et nos ex illis litteris recordamur.
b
